[Avodah] Ashkenazic Pronunciation of "HaShem"

[Ken Bloom]

On Wednesday 30 May 2007 04:40:49 am Minden wrote:
> > How did those Ashkenazim who don't normally use Israeli
> > pronunciation come to pronounce the last syllable of "HaShem" as a
> > segol and not a tzeire?
>
> It's in a closed syllable, where in most cases you don't have a
> difference between segol and tzeire. I think in closed syllables,
> tzeire was never diphthongised in Ashkenazzi Hebrew except in the
> most formal stratum, that is in laaying, and even there I'm not sure
> it's older than 150 or years.
>
> There are exceptions even in non-formal environments like with Hebrew
> everyday words in Yiddish, where there *is* a diphthong for some
> reason. These exceptions concern words like 'chein' (never "chenn"),
> for instance.

The pronunciation rules for the placement of long versus short vowels 
are affected by whether a syllable is open or closed, and by whether 
it's emphasized or not. A closed syllable usually has a short vowel 
unless it's emphasized, in which case it can have a long vowel. Most 
likely these considerations are coming into play with the 
dipthongization of tzeire.

--Ken

-- 
Ken Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/
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